A COMMEMORATIVE stone was unveiled at Bulford Camp on Friday to mark a significant milestone in the project to build 917 new homes for service families across Salisbury Plain.

The First Plot stone was unveiled by Lieutenant General Nick Pope with John Leary, major project director for Lovell, the contractor building the homes.

The homes will house families returning from Germany under the Army 2020 restructuring and are part of the Army Basing Programme (ABP) which will see three sites on the Plain at Bulford, Larkhill and Ludgershall.

There will be 225 new homes at Bulford and almost six months into the project the roads and sewers are largely complete, and a third of the foundations have already been laid.

The houses are of timber frame construction which means that much of the work is done off site and the sections arrive on lorries and are put into place by cranes. This allows for quicker construction with a house being completed in just 16 weeks.

Unveiling the stone, General Pope said: “I am amazed and gobsmacked at the amount of development on this site already in the last five months after the contract was awarded.

“What could go wrong, except the British weather, so let’s have our fingers crossed that we are going to have sunshine beaming down for the next year as they carry on with the building.”

Mr Leary said: “This is a hugely exciting and challenging scheme. My team and I are delighted to be integral to ABP and the delivery of the 917 homes, we have a huge challenge ahead of us.”

“What we are going to do here is really quite incredible."

Work on preparing the site, which is adjacent to a Neolithic henge, posed many challenges including the uncovering of a Mid Saxon burial site with 180 graves, to the removal of large amounts of unexploded ordnance.

The estate has yet to be given a name but it is expected that the roads will be named after Victoria Cross holders.

Mark Duddy, programme director for the ABP said: “It is going very well, after a long cold winter, Lovell’s are making excellent progress and we are slightly ahead of schedule.”